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Happy Halloween! We don’t need ghosts and goblins to cause a stir, digital advertising is spooky enough. Just look at the image above by Edinburgh-based photographer Etienne Pell that captures the baleful light of a digital billboard as it looms over a lonely bus shelter.
Fortunately, we come to cheer you up with anti-advertising news from the last month. Grab your garlic and read on.
Adspotters returns
From junk food to alcohol to gambling, ads for harmful products are everywhere on our streets. Children are particularly vulnerable to the messages these ads send and the bright, colourful designs they often use.
The Adspotters project aims to look at outdoor advertising from a child’s perspective to understand the kinds of ads children see on their way to and from school. Adspotters is open to all children, young people, parents and carers to take part.
Adspotters helps us to understand what kinds of ads you see, and where and when. Data on this is surprisingly limited, but the more we have the better so that we can make our case to policymakers that outdoor advertising rules need tightening.
Bristol resident Anna Bryher, who took part in Adspotters, told the BBC: “My kids think an advert is something to make people buy stuff, but I don’t think they understand the untold things they’re doing to their heads.
“Placing ideas of what is normal and what is desirable into their minds before we get to talk.”
If you’d like to take part in Adspotters, just take a photo of the ads you see on your journey to or from school then share them with us by email or on social media using #Adspotters. Find all the info you need to take part at our website.
For those who want to learn more about the impact of advertising on kids, we also have a new report, Consuming Childhood, on how all different kinds of advertising affects children and young people. Advertisers have developed various worrying techniques to target kids with ads in every part of their lives, not only to sell them things today, but to create lifelong consumers who will keep coming back for more.
- Read our blog on the new report – including an extract on surveillance advertising – here.
In other news…
🏀Fossil fuel ads are a public health issue, at least that’s according to a new briefing from Adfree Cities, Badvertising and the Faculty of Public health. The briefing makes the case for reducing the presence of fossil fuel advertising by local authorities, including introducing low carbon Advertising and Sponsorship Policies of the kind Adfree Cities calls for. Cities like Edinburgh and Sheffield have already done it, could your council be next?
- Read more: you can read the briefing (and share it with your local councillors) here.
- Find out more about engaging your local council on our website. Or just reply to this email and we’ll help you out.
⚽Last month, Adfree’s Charlotte attended the Peers for Gambling Reform summit to hear about the state of play for gambling ads. in short: it’s not good. Gambling ad regulation is a “wild west”, and outdoor advertising is no exception. Ads for gambling services and products are common on our streets, where they are seen by children, vulnerable people and those experiencing or recovering from addiction.
The case for a national tobacco-style ban on gambling ads couldn’t be clearer. And yet, government and regulators are dragging their feet.
- Read more in the blog: Gambling ads: a no-brainer for a national ban?
- Listen: the latest episode of the Better Without Billboards podcast explores issues with ad regulation in the UK and we hear from Will Prochaska of the Campaign to End Gambling Ads about the particular (and particularly frightening) case of gambling ads. Listen on Acast and Spotify.
🏈 Find us at Ethical Consumer Conference 2024 on 8th November in East London, where Charlotte and Nicola will be running a workshop on reclaiming public space for people, not consumerism.
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